Growth can also involve producing services instead of goods. In particular, a major expansion of public and caring services (like child care, education, elder care, and other life-affirming programs) would generate huge increases in GDP and incomes, with virtually no impact on the environment.
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Part 3, Chapter 15, Capitalism and the Environment, p. 183Jim Stanford
Private courier companies are fine to handle the lucrative parts of the [postal] business. But they have little interest in servicing remote communities, so these areas get poor or non-existent service. Similarly, leaving health care and education to the private marketplace will result in fine services for the affluent but leave many others without access to decent services (or in some cases any services at all). While this kind of deficiency is bad enough when it comes to postal delivery, it becomes downright serious in areas like health care and education.
Linda McQuaig
Many of our services cost more than do similar services in Europe, because, although we have a substantial quantitative deficiency of public services, the decision-takers and policy-makers, both inside and outside Government as I have said before today, being themselves from the better-off (to use a popular euphemism) sectors of our society, not only demand the highest standards of provision of public services to meet what they consider their own essential needs (for example, in public car parks); but also find it difficult to think of provision for the rest of the population in terms of standards relative to our real total resources.
John James Cowperthwaite
[Modern capitalism] is masterful at producing services people don't need and in large part probably don't want. It is brilliant at convincing people that they do need and want them. But it has difficulty turning itself to the production of those services which people really do need. Not only that, it often spends an enormous amount of time and effort convincing people that those services are either unrealistic, marginal or counterproductive.
John Ralston Saul
It seems to me that we have three choices; first, public services of high standard and cost but of limited scope, leaving unfilled a substantial part of the present gap, not necessarily benefiting those in real need and benefiting many who are not in need at all (this has been our historical approach); second, public services to meet the requirements of all, with the beneficiaries making a contribution by way of fee according to their means, and with adequate provision for complete remission in suitable cases; or third, universal public services provided for rich and poor alike on terms the poorest can afford; that is, the welfare state where all benefit and the whole cost is met by the taxpayer in general. I think it is well-known that I am an advocate of the second approach.
John James Cowperthwaite
You don’t stop caring, champ. You still care about that little girl whose underpants you saw in kindergarten. Once you care, you always care. That’s how stupid we are.
John Updike
Stanford, Jim
Stangl, Franz
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